Source: AFP
On a typical workday, Vinanda Febriani starts her morning in Indonesia by scrolling through her phone. But her goal is slightly different than most Gen Zers — she’s scanning for misinformation posts.
By 6:00 a.m., the resident of Central Java found five pieces of misinformation in a WhatsApp group, forwarding them with evidence to a group of fact-checkers debunking false information related to the election.
Small armies of grassroots fact-checkers like Febriani and her fellow volunteers are battling a wave of election disinformation in the world’s third-largest democracy, spending their spare time clearing seats ahead of next week’s presidential election.
“A lot of people will be fanatical about their chosen candidate pairings. So they usually don’t care if the information is true or not,” said the 23-year-old graduate.
“I’m worried about that.”
One of the posts Febriani found claimed that the police had openly declared their support for presidential candidate Prabovo Subiando.
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/cc5cfbc1d8d007d4.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/cc5cfbc1d8d007d4.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
Read also
Pakistan suspends mobile phone service for election day
“I checked the video and found it had nothing to do with the election,” he said.
The freelance administrative assistant discussed the post with her friends and wrote an exposé for a website created by Mafindo, one of the country’s largest fact-checking networks.
The site’s reports are used by thousands of volunteers in more than 40 cities across the Southeast Asian archipelago nation to take down the posts.
Fighting lies
In the weeks leading up to the vote, the number of fake posts was lower than in the 2019 election, which experts say is due to greater awareness of disinformation, a less divisive race than previous elections and better monitoring from the beginning.
There were 714 issues of disinformation then compared to 204 before this year’s vote, Idham Holik, commissioner of the General Election Commission (KPU), told AFP, citing government figures.
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/e69d800486e2ec7e.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/e69d800486e2ec7e.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
Read also
‘Star Wars’ actor sues Disney with funding from Elon Musk’s X
However, numbers are still a challenge as new technology and platforms such as TikTok and SnackVideo emerge.
Source: AFP
“It’s a completely unbalanced and one-sided war,” Mafindo founder Harry Sufemi told AFP.
Social media monitoring has also become more difficult with platforms such as X, formerly known as Twitter, now allowing users to verify themselves for a fee.
“We can’t track hundreds of thousands of new posts every day, only machines can,” Soufemi said.
Volunteers often face obstacles when sharing information with the public as well.
In 2019, Roesda Leikawa, 37, was branded pro-government in her community after she responded to a fake WhatsApp post about President Joko Widodo with a Mafindo reference.
“I told them that we are not only debunking Jokowi hoaxes, but also Prabowo hoaxes. I shared the debunking links. After that they were silent,” he said, using the president’s nickname.
False fears
A new trend has emerged that makes their job even more difficult — footage created using artificial intelligence.
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/0b6b355077f1f457.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/0b6b355077f1f457.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
Read also
West Bank Palestinians ‘exhausted’ by ubiquitous Israeli surveillance
While Subianto used a cartoon of himself for his campaign created with genetic artificial intelligence, the technology is being used online to spread disinformation both harmful and helpful to candidates.
A video surfaced online last year of candidate Anies Baswedan giving a speech in Arabic, winning praise in the Muslim-majority nation and more than two million views.
Users called him “really smart” and “very smart,” but the former Jakarta governor doesn’t speak the language.
Deepfakes have also surfaced showing Subianto and Widodo speaking other languages.
AFP Fact Check found that this year’s election was the first in Indonesia to feature deepfakes.
Source: AFP
“We didn’t see deep misinformation in early 2023,” said Aribowo Sasmito, co-founder of Mafindo.
AFP, along with more than 100 other fact-checking organizations, is paid by TikTok and Facebook parent Meta to verify videos that may contain false information.
Indonesian deepfakes on TikTok have been viewed more than seven million times since October, according to AFP Fact Check. They have also been shared on Facebook, Instagram and X.
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/9f8b9c61e185222d.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/9f8b9c61e185222d.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
Read also
A chance for Italy’s toxic steel industry to finally go green
A TikTok spokesperson said it takes “strict action against artificially manipulated content that misleads viewers.” Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
Many of the fake posts managed by fact-checkers target government agencies such as the police, anti-graft commissions and electoral commissions.
A fake post debunked by AFP Fact Check claimed Jakarta had issued more than 13,000 identity cards to Chinese citizens so they could vote.
Sasmito said he still finds the misinformation he’s debunked being republished, but refuses to give in to the deluge.
“I keep telling myself that the most important thing is that I did my part in this battle,” he said.
Source: AFP